Stalin’s Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith Page A

light fixtures. From the far end came the sound of a door being punched open by a gurney and feet stamping off snow.
    Victor considered the three bodies. “It makes you think.”
    “About mortality?”
    “It makes me think I should open a flower shop. People are always dead or dying. They need flowers.” Victor pushed in the gymnast, green man and biker and rolled out a crisply burned body in a fetal position. Pushed it in and rolled out a woman on a bed of gray hair. Rolled her in and pulled out a male punching bag of cuts and contusions. Rolled him in and rolled out a goose-necked suicide, pushed him in and balked at the next shelf’s pong of decay. “Anyway, it occurred to me that maybe we’re taking the wrong approach. Our problem isn’t necessarily the tattoo—we can always find an artist who can copy that—but the skin.” Victor pulled out a body with a morose face and a deep wound across the back of the neck. Kuznetsov.
    Arkady looked at his watch: four in the morning. He was cold and wet and a little dizzy. Maybe he was dreaming. He hadn’t noticed in the dead man’s apartment that Kuznetsov’s right knee looked as if it had been shattered and badly reconstructed.
    “What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying we need a more proactive approach.”
    “You mean, you want to take the skin from one of these bodies?”
    “I talked to a tattoo artist. He says all he needs is the canvas, so to speak, if we just keep the skin hydrated.”
    “Wet?”
    “Moist.”
    “You would do this?”
    Was it possible to enter negative hours? Arkady wondered. Extra time that was entirely off the clock? Because skinning the dead wasn’t done in any normal twenty-four hours.
    Before Victor answered Arkady said, “What do we know about Zoya’s business? Wasn’t the husband a partner? Why don’t we find out more about that before we start on poor souls at the morgue? Autopsies are enough. Do you know how this would sound in court?”
    “Skin is skin.”
    “Whose skin?” Marat Urman approached from the dark of the hallway, emerging from silhouette to solid reality, armored in his red leather jacket but amiable, ready to join the conversation once he knew the subject. “Whose skin are we talking about?”
    Arkady said, “Anyone’s. It’s wise to keep it.”
    “Good idea. The chief of the morgue doesn’t like detectives tampering with the evidence, dead or not.” Urman stopped at the open drawer and gazed down at its occupant. “Why it’s our friend, Kuznetsov. He’s not wearing a cleaver anymore, but I recognize him.” He looked up at Arkady. “Why are you so interested in this case? His wife tried to chop off his head. We have her confession and the weapon she used. We make a good case and you try to screw us.”
    Arkady said, “I’m not trying to do anything.”
    “Then why is the drawer open? Why are you here in the middle of the night looking at the body? Is there a chance you’re just trying to fuck Detective Isakov? This looks, how to say, personal. This is about Doctor Kazka, right?”
    “We were looking at all the bodies.”
    “For head lice? I understand. What’s worse than losing a woman is finding out how little you know about her.”
    “I know Eva.”
    “No, you don’t, because you don’t know Chechnya. The three of us saw shit you can’t imagine. It’s natural that Eva and Nikolai gravitate to each other. It’s only human. You should step back and let them work it out. Don’t go sneaking around. If she chooses you, so be it. Be civilized. I’m sure you’ll see her again.” Urman let a smile develop. “In fact, I can see her right now. Isakov is fucking her and fucking her and she’s saying, ‘Oh Nikolai, you are so much bigger and better than that loser Renko.’”
    “Do you want me to shoot him?” Victor asked Arkady.
    “No.”
    “No,” Urman said, “the investigator doesn’t want a brawl. He’s not the brawling type. I wish he was.”
    “Piss off,” Victor